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Thursday, October 10, 2013

Terrorism continues

Last Saturday night 8 year old Noam Glick was returning to her home on the edge of the settlement of Psagot, north of Jerusalem. Suddenly she saw an Arab man in the stairwell next to her house wearing a face-mask, she screamed to her parents "there's an Arab in the yard," and before anyone could do anything the Arab terrorist fired three times and shot her from one meter away. Fortunately the bullet that entered her shoulder near her neck failed to cut anything life-threatening and she continued to scream, which caused the Arab to run back to the hole in the fence and run away. Noam was helicoptered to hospital in Jerusalem where she was treated and released.

It was later discovered that the hole in the fence had been known about and the alarm system was not working, a further example of incompetence. A massive IDF hunt ensued and the assailant and his brother were arrested in the West Bank town of El Bireh the following day. Since the IDF close off the roads into and out of suspected localities from which the terrorists operate, there is coinsiderable pressure to give them up. This is an example of a "routine" terrorist incident in which individuals take action that could lead to fatalities, but it is difficult to prove that any organization was involved.

Two days later Pres. Abbas of the PA, who has routinely condemned terrorism, mentioned the shooting incident, but failed to specifically condemn it. He rather condemned the shooting of four Palestinians in Kalandia, although they were shot during riots in which they bombarded IDF soldiers with rocks and Molotov cocktails. Incidentally this was mentioned during the visit of ten Labor and left-wing MKs to Ramallah. When Pres. Abbas visited the Knesset, Israel put out Palestinian flags, but no Israeli flags were to be seen when the MKs visited Ramallah. These are supposed to be our friendly negotiating partners.

Meanwhile the negotiations are continuing, now in their ninth meeting. They have 9 months to complete the whole comprehensive agreement. After 100 years of the conflict it would be a miracle if this could be achieved. PM Netanyahu has made Palestinian recognition of Israel as the Jewish State as one of his major requirements in teh negotiations. However, today Finance MInister Yair Lapid in an interview with Charlie Rose in the US said that he did not regard this as a necessary requirement. Apart from the poor judgement in undermining his own PM, this kind of statement definitely interferes in the Israeli position regarding the negotiations. Whatever happened to loyalty.